Obama likely to escape campaign audit

The Federal Election Commission is unlikely to conduct a potentially embarrassing audit of how Barack Obama raised and spent his presidential campaign’s record-shattering windfall, despite allegations of questionable donations and accounting that had the McCain campaign crying foul.

Adding insult to injury for Republicans: The FEC is obligated to complete a rigorous audit of McCain’s campaign coffers, which will take months, if not years, and cost McCain millions of dollars to defend.

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Obama is expected to escape that level of scrutiny mostly because he declined an $84 million public grant for his campaign that automatically triggers an audit and because the sheer volume of cash he raised and spent minimizes the significance of his errors. Another factor: The FEC, which would have to vote to launch an audit, is prone to deadlocking on issues that inordinately impact one party or the other – like approving a messy and high-profile probe of a sitting president.

McCain, on the other hand, accepted the $84 million in taxpayer money, which not only barred him from raising or spending more – allowing Obama to fund many times more ads and ground operations – but also will keep his lawyers busy for a couple years explaining how every penny was spent.

The Obama campaign does not expect to be audited, but spokesman Ben LaBolt said it would be ready in the event it is.

"We have had a first rate compliance operation for an unprecedented national grassroots fundraising effort," LaBolt said.

“Nobody wants to go through an audit,” said former FEC chairman Michael Toner. As the top lawyer for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, which accepted public financing, Toner prepared for that campaign’s mandatory audit, before he was appointed by Bush to a seat on the FEC.

Agency investigators fan out across the nation interviewing campaign staffers and vendors to account for even the most seemingly trivial expenses.

The resulting audits have dinged publicly financed presidential campaigns for billing the press for port-a-potties accessible to supporters at events (Bob Dole in 1996) and using the wrong formula to divide the cost of outfitting campaign planes between primary and general accounts (John Kerry in 2004).

Obama – the first presidential candidate to decline public funding in the general election – certainly would provide fodder for the green eye-shades at the FEC’s E Street offices.

And FEC analysts over the course of the campaign have written more than a dozen letters to Obama singling out hundreds of contributors for whom the campaign either didn’t supply adequate information or from whom he accepted donations exceeding the $4,600 limit.